BR TO W.W. NORTON & COMPANY, INC. / WARDER NORTON, 7 MAY 1940
BRACERS 85213. TLS. Norton papers, Columbia U.
Proofread by K. Blackwell and A. Duncan

212 Loring Avenue
Los Angeles1
May 7 1940

Dear Warder,

Thank you for your letter of May 1, and for the information it contains.

As regards the book, I am afraid I failed to convey its character to you. I am quite ready to write something different from the introduction for a blurb, but the book is only intended to appeal to fairly advanced students of philosophy. Its primary purpose is to be an original contribution to the theory of a difficult subject; whether it is intelligible to many or few is a secondary consideration. For myself, I believe that it will be thought well of by professional philosophers , but even as to that some time may be needed.

The Principles of Mathematics, which, you say, still sells, is a good deal more difficult than this book, and was, at first, coldly received by the learned. But it is with the Principles of Mathematics that this book is to be compared. Read the first sentence of Chapter I in that book, and ask yourself what you would have said to it if you had had it offered in MS.

Your letter brought to a head, in my mind, a conviction that had been growing in me for some time, namely that the word “Language” ought not to appear in the title. It misleads people, and moreover, as I have gone on with the book, the linguistic element has grown less. I do not wish to use the word “semantics” for two reasons: First, it has a well-established meaning in the study of languages (as opposed to language), which is quite outside the scope of my book; second, in its modern philosophical sense it has been vulgarized by Korzybski and Stuart Chase. This book has nothing in common with either and I do not wish it to be supposed to be similar in subject or treatment.

I have therefore considered the question of title and have decided on An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth.

I am afraid we cannot hope that the book will appeal to a wide public or even to the “reasonably intelligent reader”.

It occurs to me that perhaps, the book being not what you expected, you would rather not publish it. Harvard, as you know,a usually publishes the William James lectures itself, but was willing to make an exception in this case. I have no doubt that they would be willing to publish it, whether or not I actually give the William James lectures. We have no contract yet, and if we had I should not wish to hold you to it.

The word “epistemological”, I agree, occurs too often; I can sometimes, but not always, replace it by several shorter words.

I will wait for your answer to this letter before preparing a blurb.

Some people tell me they have got The Amberley Papers cheap. Has it been remaindered?

Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell.

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  [document] Proofread against a microfilm printout of the original.

Textual Notes

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  know after deleted probably